


The Beholder

by Sjukdom



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, Dark, Gablepot, M/M, Voyeurism, gobblepot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 04:58:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5815141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sjukdom/pseuds/Sjukdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabe was a true beholder, the one who saw everything, while staying invisible himself. He watched the life from the shadows, but then something made him decide to move out of them. Someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beholder

_No blind eyes can see_

When the sun came up on horizon, Gabe was lying motionless on his back, his head hugged by way too welcoming and soft pillow like by swamp's mud. When the sun was nowhere to be seen anymore, he was all the same in his bed, with his back screaming at him to lay himself upon something more suitable. He couldn't sleep, but it was important for him to have a decent daily regimen: up at day, down at night. He suspected it was something he grew accustomed to in his long days in prisons. Or it was a humble try to pretend that nothing had changed since the time he was young and could sleep like a dead man, so the fact that he got no sleep at all, but was in bed anyway didn't matter. He was an old boy and he knew it. No need to underline it.

Neighbors took him for a lone wolf and didn't try to communicate with him in any way, partly because of previously failed attempts, partly because there was something in Gabe that distressed them. Gabe was okay with it. He didn't need them to say anything to know what was happening in their lives. And he preferred them not to poke around in his own life, too. He was indeed an old boy and much could be forgiven for the likes of him, but not entirely everything.

Maybe, even not that much.

Gabe rarely experienced some kind of forgiveness before. He got out of one jail and immediately went to another. From an 18-years-old boy he grew into a man and then was only getting older, fatter and uglier. He was charged of different things, part of which he didn't commit, but let others think he did. He served sentences for other gang's members and even bosses and that helped him now, bringing him some kind of salary from the gang. With it he could afford this flat. Though small and stinking of cat's piss, it was the best place on Earth for him.

Most clearly Gabe remembered his very first attorney at his very first trial. He was a despicable young man with very bad skin, colorless hair and big colorless eyes. Gabe instantly thought that fishes in supermarkets had these kind of eyes, lifeless and unseeing. His mouth was opening, but no sounds came out of this stinking hole with rotten teeth and slippery pale tongue, which reminded Gabe of an ugly mollusc. Everything about the guy was fishy. Sitting in handcuffs, Gabe mused grimly that his dick must be smelling like fish, too, if he had any, of course. Here on the surface he was as helpless as any nautical thing. The walking fish-thing babbled something about Gabe doing nothing to the victim, he had just been watching, it was not a crime itself, right, your honor?

He had very funny movements, that guy. He looked like a puppet with somebody's hand up its ass and this hand was shaking violently. Gabe suddenly imagined a mad ventriloquist with a dead salmon on his hand, who was imitating an attorney at the court. How he was waving his hand with fish guts flowing down it and clapping fingers inside dead fish's head, making it open and close its mouth. Gabe could see it clearly now. God, the guy certainly was acting like somebody ripped out his cephalic vesicle he had instead of human brains. Gabe covered his young face with his hands, not so callused then and started to giggle. Then he started to laugh. Then he roared with laughter, tears streaming down his cheeks. In awkward silence feet were shuffled, but he didn't give a shit. With each glance at his attorney's stupid face, covered with scaly-like pimples Gabe laughed louder and louder. His joy didn't wear off even when he was found guilty as accessory to murder.

Pacing his cell, he sometimes thought how the trial might have turned out if he hadn't been laughing his ass off. The sentence could be shorter or... It didn't matter. Seeing that clown worth it. Just like seeing that guy's, the victim's face melting from acid. Gabe was told he must see the execution not to be tempted by stealing from the gang in the future. He agreed and had the most exciting time in his 18-years-old life, while living flesh turned into liquid and poured down on the chest, tearing apart with screams. He still stood there near the corpse, fascinated by its likeness with burned candle, when cops came. He didn't sell his gang mates to cops, he was not like it. When asked to describe the execution, Gabe gave them every tiny detail about the poor bastard, while he remembered them all. He was good at seeing, he told them. When he depicted two sticky streams of slime, which once had been the eyes, one of the detectives ran out of the interrogation room, pale with nausea. Gabe remembered himself being surprised with it. He was young and didn't understand that his interest in seeing things was not common. He didn't object too hotly to being sentenced. There was plenty of things to see in prison.

Switching one prison cell for another, he began to understand that it was his gift, his nature. He had long suspected that other people were at least half-blind. They could see either the whole picture or the details, but not both at once like he could. They decided not to see at all if the object was too disgusting or disappointing. They didn't see the most obvious things and that made them careless. But he was the watchman. The beholder. He saw everything, while others saw nothing at all, like his parents didn't spot him while he was peering through the keyhole in their bedroom's door. There were many opportunities for them to catch him, but they were too busy shagging each other and making stupid sounds, which reminded him of animal farm. Gabe saw everything, every body roll and every urine stain on his father's underpants. He felt no shame or disgust watching his parents fucking. It was an interesting sight, no more and no less. He remembered telling his schoolmates what sex is and their perplexed expressions. They stopped coming to their place after that.

Gabe started to find pleasure in watching while serving his second sentence. It was pure, seeing just for the sake of seeing, no matter what object was. He knew he could do with more appropriate things, but humans tended to take most interest in either violence or sex and it was just how it was. He was no exemption and, in fact, didn't want to be.

He knew it was hard for prisoners, especially for those like him, who spent in prisons most of their lives to live outside the cell, but it didn't matter much for him. He wasn't very social person his whole life anyway. He didn't need to find a job. He had a place to live, so he didn't mind what psychologists were saying. Gabe was okay with his small flat in the small three-stored house, until he had found out that most flats were empty and only four was inhabited: his own, one next to him, one above him and one below. He was in the heart of the house. Then he realized that it was his dream coming true. With a little help of tools he made tiny peepholes in walls, ceiling and floor, unnoticed because of a ruining state of the house. His watchman's post, a spy's lair was safely secured with plaster peeling off, loose wallpapers and lays of dust. He was unseen while seeing everything. 

He tried out the first peephole he made immediately. His neighbor, a serious boy in spectacles, was sniffing some white sticky substance from a tube while his mother was making out with a man far too young to be the boy's father. They were in the same room and she didn't even notice! True enough, most people were completely blind. The boy hid the tube in his desk, his eyes were shining and reddened, snot was flowing from his nostrils. He stared at his mother, swaying slightly. When she finished sucking his boyfriend's saliva into her mouth, she turned and smiled at him. The boy smiled back.

Not entirely everything happening in the house was like that. Gabe had seen happiness and joy, too, though they quickly turned into another disasters and grieves. Was it life generally or was it a particular life in this particular part of the city, he didn't know. At night he lied down on his bed and let his eyes rest. He didn't think of himself as of some kind of pervert. He was blessed with gift of seeing and didn't want to dump it. He watched, taking breaks to eat and shit. He had goddamn daily regimen and wore sunglasses not to hurt his eyes. Too careful for a mad sicko. But Gabe had to be careful, once he settled down in his own paradise. There was so much more to be seen here.

***

_Can you see the world in my eyes?_

Gabe had been sulking lately, because the flat next to him became empty. The inhabitants he had seen the first time, the whoring mother and the boy, fled hastily after the boy's true father appeared, growling and banging on the door with his fists. The mother yelled at him to get the fuck out of their lives, they were so happy without such a hopeless loser and pretentious freak, unable to earn money or at least do his own wife properly and the father screamed back that he would break through the damn door and rip out her slutty throat. The son was indifferent. He stared at the wall, painted all shades of white by many other occupants in attempts to make it look more like home. He must have been high again. After the other neighbors came complaining and threatening to call the police, the father left, swearing he would find them. A couple of hours later the flat had no traces of humans, who occupied it. Gabe was satisfied with the show, but then the spleen came. He was robbed of the place most convenient for surveillance. Days were dull and his spirits lied low.

When one morning not long after the incident with enraged father he heard noises from that flat, he jumped out of the bed immediately. Well, his weight wasn't a great help and he more like crawled out of it, swearing under his breath and limped towards the peepholes. Gabe didn't even remember that it was too early for him to get up. He peered through one of the holes, excited at the thought of new stories, being told right in front of his eyes, of new worlds – no, universes even, because each human was a universe, right? Some clever bastard said that. In Gabe's opinion, it was true, though the idea didn't make him feel sorry for those, who were murdered or mutilated. The universes were as nice to see at their birth and in full blossom as at their death. 

Gabe had two new neighbors, both male and rather young from his old boy point of view. He looked them up and down, while they were unpacking the numerous boxes, chatting and laughing. One was tightly built, fair-haired, with soldier's short haircut and exact movements. Must be really a soldier, thought Gabe. He was obviously not very comfortable in civilian clothes. It was easy for Gabe to imagine him saluting some jerk and contemplating him with awe only because he had higher rank. He knew the type and disliked the guy immediately. Gabe drew his attention to the other occupant – a friend of the soldier or whoever he was. The small, slim boy with spikes of black hair and slightly freckled skin, the kisses of sunshine the city had been enjoying lately.

Gabe felt himself uneasy. He sensed that something had changed in his views. He had never estimated what he was watching, everything was just “interesting”. But this term was too narrow for the black-haired boy, too dewless and too blank. He was more than just interesting. He walked among the boxes, limping and twisting his ankle in a curious way and in that limp there was more beauty than Gabe had ever witnessed. He looked like a graceful wild creature that was shot and it made him look vulnerable, calling for support and guard. It was a maintenance to the boy's natural frailty and delicacy, it underlined it and made him look whole. Gabe was displeased with seeing him moving furniture around and sorting out their things. It was like watching young men from Goya's paintings at hard and stupid work, like laying bricks. He remembered the paintings, because they decorated the prison's library and was impressed with them, though Gabe kept it a secret. 

He disliked the boy's flatmate even more for letting this kind of nonsense happen. He was the one to do this. The boy, the pale foal with twisted joint should rest. It was a kind of blasphemy to make him busy with such mundane things. He was a broken porcelain figurine from other age or even realm. Gabe was surprised with his reaction, but let it go. He had a feeling that he had been waiting for this his whole life. The sight to die for. The invaluable masterpiece he was given a chance to contemplate. He realized suddenly that, while he had watched many things, he was never happy with it, truly happy. He didn't expect it to come, but it did in the shape of this boy, whose white hands were already grayed with dust, covering every surface in the flat. He rubbed his cheek, smearing it with dust and leaving it there like a visible dark trail of a tear. 

The soldier looked out of the window, laughed and called the boy by his name. Gabe moved his thick lips, tasting it. Oswald, old-fashioned and rather pretentious, but is suited the boy. The name had the taste of absinth and opium smoke. It was easy to imagine a hangman's rope around his neck instead of a boring tie. Oswald was a name for a crazed poet, haunted by the demons he wrote into life with ink. Gabe remembered books by French poets he had read in prison's library. Verlain, Baudelaire, Vian. Pale outworn faces, delirious eyes on the back covers. Oswald would look more natural among them, dead and long gone, than by the soldier's side, giggling at what he was pointing at. Gabe knew, what it was – a sign, promoting a local Chinese restaurant, made with care and inspiration and also with poor English skills and too many exclamation marks. But it was doing its work – everybody, after laughing for a while, became curious what food was served at that hilarious place. 

The boy called his flatmate Jim. Gabe sniffed. What else could he be called, anyway. He was as interesting as that single short syllable and it was more than sufficient to describe him. He was hardly visible near Oswald's transparent glow. Too near, in Gabe's opinion. They must be more than friends and it was depressing for Gabe. Jim enclasped Oswald's shoulders and pulled him closer, possessively and demonstratively. It was not a loving embrace, it was more like a police tape: do not cross, this belongs to me. Gabe let out an irritated sigh. The likes of Jim always got the best of what the world was offering to them and had no idea how to maintain these treasures. They were savages, who were given the finest pieces of art and they knew nothing about their true value. 

Oswald's obvious happiness was much more surprising. Where could they met, how could they get on together? Oswald should have been bored with such a simple creature long ago. Maybe he just hadn't met a more decent person yet and was waiting for a chance to get rid of Jim immediately after the encounter. It was a game, a masquerade, a deceit of a fatidic raven, pretending to be a house parrot. When time would come, when everything would be settled in the new place, the raven would fly away. It was more comforting to imagine it that way than to admit that Oswald was really happy to live like that. 

Gabe kept on watching them the whole day, though the show became only more and more irritating. He couldn't stand the way Jim treated Oswald. Like an ordinary man, one of a thousand identical humans he picked up for his own joy. He kissed him casually on the cheek and on the lips – one quick peck against a more deep kiss, which looked like he wanted to reach Oswald's windpipe. To block the oxygen for him. To block the life he deserved with that pink muscle, twisting inside Oswald's delicate mouth. No respect, no wonder, only an animal instinct to bite into and grab everything that could be accessed, to overwhelm. Gabe's eyes were watering, partly because of his weariness, partly because of his anger rising and tightening his throat. In the evening they finished with their possessions for the day and lied down on the unmade bed. Gabe could barely hear what they were saying. Oswald's voice was woolly, making Gabe think that he drank lots of cognac every day, but anyway pleasant and tuneful. Gabe compared it with the sound of a platter being played on an old record player. The books he had read through his prison life must have influenced his thinking more than he thought before. Or was it the boy calling to his more poetic side? Gabe let his thought wander, unwilling to see what would happen next. They kissed again, Jim on top of Oswald, his hands on either side of him. Restraining. Making him unable to escape. Subconsciously the bastard knew he was not the one for Oswald and tried to suppress him. These army blokes, they understood only dominance and submission. Jerks.

Gabe felt his guts tightening. He was dying to take a piss, his head felt dizzy and his belly was rumbling. Usually he was annoyed if his body distracted him from watching, but now he was even grateful. Gabe knew what Jim was up to and for the first time in his life he had no desire to watch it. He was already enough disgusted with him slobbering Oswald. Watching Jim fucking him made Gabe feel sick. He witnessed a lot of rapes, true enough, some were extremely violent, some were extremely perverted, but not the single one made him think about... Heresy. Abomination. Gabe stood back from the peephole and shook his head. He had to release himself immediately or his bladder would explode in his guts. And he had to eat. Hopefully, the prick would satisfy his itch while he would be away. Though most of all Gabe wanted to knock at their door and save Oswald from this, but couldn't think of a decent reason. He didn't want to look like some old fool in front of him.

And he was not a meddling type. But, it seemed, this went to hell together with his famous daily regimen. Oswald changed everything. Great things tended to do it and he was certainly the greatest Gabe could wish for. He knew that people tended to react more enthusiastically to such events, but he was old, his life had been tough and his emotions were restrained. But Gabe felt himself change, felt that joy and awe, sharp and hot for him, wounds opening and being seared immediately. Other people might have not even noticed it, but for him it was a revelation, a weep of desert skies. He stared outside while consuming his late supper. The only thing spoiled everything and Jim was that thing. Awe was replaced by hate and scorn. He had never pushed the panic button before as he was watching and that allowed him to keep calm and not go meddling. Now nothing could stop him.

When he was finished with his corporal needs, he returned to the peephole, praying that everything had been done, Jim got what he craved for and passed out mercifully, allowing Oswald a bit of freedom from his smothering presence. The first thing Gabe saw were Oswald's clothes, a messy pile of fancy items. He shifted his glance to the bed. He vaguely remembered something about naked body being blinding, but decided then that it was an exaggeration, claptrap of a too impressionable idiot. Now he witnessed this himself with Oswald. His white skin caught rays of setting sun and flickering neon lights from the street as if it was a glass painting. Living, breathing, warm glass painting with muscles moving under the decorated surface. A thing of beauty from old tales. A holy temple, ready for worship and praise.

Gabe didn't want to give up these thought for the real world. In the real world a thing of beauty was lying facedown, with an unclean pillow under his narrow hips, whimpering while Jim shoved his dick into him. To see it was much worse than to imagine it. Imagination didn't provide him with such details as wet noises he heard so good that he couldn't believe he hadn't heard much more loud sounds before. Such details as tiny drops of lube, covering Oswald's inner thighs or the lousy sounds Jim made. His fingers left pink marks on Oswald's glowing skin and pulled at his hair lightly, making him throw back his head. He was used to have Oswald in any way he liked, the ungrateful brat. In the right realm he must consider himself happy to be allowed to touch the hemline of Oswald's clothes, but here and now he was allowed inside him. A barbarian invader. It was nauseating. What had happened to Oswald that he had no self-respect and let himself to be humiliated like that?

He looked so tender, so defenseless without his clothes and settled in that way, with spread legs, opened and exposing his most private parts. Oswald opened his mouth like a hungry baby bird and closed his eyes tight when Jim seized his hips with both hands and started to move them rhythmically towards his crotch, tense with upcoming orgasm. Lustful male. He was given the finest creation ever existed and decided no better than just stick his prick into it. Filled with anger and loathing, Gabe hardly could force himself to see the disgrace to the end.

Oswald was blushing and breathing heavily, damped with his own semen. The climax left a grimace on his face, more of a pain than actual pleasure. Or Gabe just imagined this. They were hugging each other. The both looked happy. Gabe remembered the proverb about pearls and swine. Were pearls themselves aware of their precious nature? Did they think about better fate? Even if not, there always could be a man realizing their worth. The one who would pick them up from sty's dirty floor and make them shine like they deserved.

Gabe let his gaze wander across the room, trying to spot anything of help. Something he could use to get rid of Jim. There were still a couple of unpacked boxes and in one of them he noticed familiar uniform. Police uniform. Jim wasn't a soldier, at least not now, he was a cop. Gabe looked at Oswald, but he was already asleep, silent and immovable in his tainted perfection. Jim snored, one arm still wrapped around Oswald. Gabe grinned. All for the best. Cops could be easily shot during raids or arrests. A likely thing to happen, especially if you had a criminal who owed you a debt. A nice little favor for good old Gabe. And for Oswald, of course. He would understand, why it was necessary and would be grateful. When he would rise. When he would be treated like he deserved. Like a king.

That night Gabe slept for the first time in days, actually happy for the first time in years, getting ready for all things to come.


End file.
